COURT REJECTS CHALLENGE TO CALIF. `3 STRIKES' LAW

WASHINGTON The Supreme Court today rejected a challenge to California's
so-called three-strikes law by a man who was sentenced to 25 years to life
in prison after stealing a bottle of vitamins from a grocery store.

The court refused to hear an appeal in which Michael Riggs said the state
sentencing law, which provides longer sentences for repeat offenders,
violated his rights and amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer voted to hear Riggs' appeal, but four votes are
needed to grant such full review.

Three other justices said Riggs' case raised "obviously substantial" issues
but that they were willing to let lower courts consider them first.

"It is prudent . . . for this court to await review by other courts,"
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for himself and Justices David H. Souter and
Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Riggs was convicted of shoplifting a bottle of vitamins from an Alberston's
Store in Banning, Calif., in 1995. When arrested, Riggs had a hypodermic
syringe hidden in one of his socks.

He previously had been convicted of a variety of crimes - vehicle theft,
possession of a controlled substance, forgery, receiving stolen property,
attempted burglary, check fraud and robbery.

In a lengthy appeal he wrote from his Corcoran, Calif., prison, Riggs
contended that his sentence violated his due process rights and wrongly
punished him for crimes committed before the state's three-strikes law was
enacted.

Riggs had not raised those issues when he appealed his sentence in state
courts.

The Supreme Court appeal also argued that the sentence violated the
Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment because it was
disproportionate to the crime.

A state appeals court rejected that argument in 1997, and the California
Supreme Court last year refused to hear Riggs' ensuing appeal. He will not
be eligible for parole until he has served 25 years.